John Ivison: Conservatives have attack ads set to launch against Justin Trudeau

Conservatives have attack ads set to launch against Justin Trudeau

The Harper Conservatives have not bothered to wait for the apparent formality of Justin Trudeau’s election as the next leader of the Liberal Party – an attack ad campaign is in the can already, claiming that Mr. Trudeau is “not ready” to govern.

Sources say the Tory campaign will start almost immediately after the Liberal leadership results are announced on April 14, in an effort to define the new leader in the eyes of voters.

The Conservatives won’t have it all their own way though. Mr. Trudeau has raised around $1.3-million in donations since his campaign launched last October and is set to hit back with his own advertising campaign that highlights his self-proclaimed virtues as a natural leader who is involved in politics for the right reasons.

This contrasts to the experience of two previous leaders – Stéphane Dion and Michael Ignatieff – who were subjected to sustained assaults at a time when the Liberals could not afford to respond. Mr. Dion was decried as being “not a leader,” while Mr. Ignatieff was accused of “just visiting” – a knock on his “foreignness.” Both men attributed their subsequent failure, in part, to the power of the Conservative negative advertising.

After leaving politics, Mr. Ignatieff told a law school audience that attack advertising works by denying political leaders “standing,” or the right to be heard on any given subject, by portraying the speaker as “one of them,” as opposed to “one of us.” “Belonging matters more than confidence, expertise or trustworthiness,” he said.

Going after Mr. Trudeau for his perceived lack of credentials is curious.

Successful attack ads are grounded in reality and have to amplify feelings about their subject that already exist. On that score, the Tory ads may work well – many Liberals remain unconvinced that Mr. Trudeau has been tested sufficiently to be leader of their party, far less leader of the country.

Former Liberal leadership candidate Marc Garneau told an audience during one of the party’s interminable debates that they need a leader with “qualities forged in the fire of life’s experiences.”

For a Conservative Party trying to portray Mr. Trudeau as a political neophyte, there is plenty of raw material to work with – from his comments on how the country is in a mess because it’s run by Albertans to his flip-flop on the gun registry.

On the other hand, Mr. Trudeau’s advisers are happy that the Conservatives have gone after their candidate over his lack of experience, rather than for being the son of a former prime minister with no obvious qualifications for political leadership.

The feeling in the Trudeau camp is that his campaigning skills have improved since the leadership race started, and that he will grow as a politician further still before the next general election in two and a half years time.

One of the Conservative ads targeting Michael Ignatieff

We will need to see the finished ads before final judgment, but it seems the Conservatives have not attempted to tar Mr. Trudeau as being “one of them” not “one of us.”

It may be that the party’s own research suggests Canadians are fed up with negative ads and have decided to pull their punches as a result. Certainly, the ads released to attack NDP leader Thomas Mulcair in fall 2011 were limp by previous Conservative standards – a policy-based assault, accusing him of propagating “risky theories and dangerous economic experiments.”

It may be that the Tories don’t want to weaken either of the other national party leaders to the point where the other then becomes a genuine threat in 2015.

Whatever the reason, people who have seen the finished ad say it lacks the bite of its predecessors. But an end to Conservative adventures in what Mr. Ignatieff called “spite and spin”? Don’t bet on it.

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